I was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1935. After the German occupation of Poland in 1939, my family escaped to the city of Lida in Belarus (in the Soviet Union). We came under Germans rule after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and ghetto inmates later that fall. In the ghetto massacre of May 8, 1942, most of the Lida Jews were shot; my family was initially selected to die but we were later spared because the Germans needed my father's surgical skills to operate on wounded German soldiers. In the summer of 1942, I was given away to a Christian woman in response to a rumor that all Jewish children would be killed; I returned to the ghetto when the rumor proved false. In November 1942, Jews in the Russian partisans rescued us from the ghetto and brought us to the nearby Lipiczany forest. In early 1943, a partisan hospital was established in a remote part of the forest, with my father as chief of staff. To protect me from rape by the Russian partisans, I was turned into a boy, my hair was shaved and I wore boy's clothing. On my eighth birthday, I was given a pistol of my own. We were liberated in June 1944. Later that year we escaped Belarus to central Poland. Traveling as refugees, we traversed most of central Europe to flee the invading Soviets. Soldiers in the Jewish Brigade from Palestine brought us to Italy, where we stayed for nearly two years. I came to America in February 1947, as I turned 12. I came with no knowledge of English or previous schooling and I had a lot of catching up to do. Nevertheless, I finished high school at 17 and college at NYU at 20, and married Henry Brysk (a physicist and professor) and Holocaust survivor from France. We have two daughters, Judy (a physician) and Havi (a psychologist and artist), and five grandchildren.

EDUCATION

-1955 B.S., New York University (Biology/Chemistry)

-1958 M.S., University of Michigan (Microbiology)

-1967 Ph.D., Columbia University (Biological and Biomedical Sciences)

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE

-Professor in 3 medical school departments (Dermatology, Microbiology, and Biochemistry)

-Director of the Dermatology Research Laboratory, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX

4. Chapter on Miriam Brysk in Women of Valor: Polish Resisters to the Third Reichby Joanne D. Gilbert Gihon River Press, 2014

-Awarded in 2015, by the Florida Authors and Publishers Association: TheGold Medal for Biography

5. Miriam M. Brysk and Joanne D. Gilbert: Victory for Miriam. A book of Miriam Brysk’s life for middle school children - In preparation

HOLOCAUST PRESENTATIONS

I have been a frequent speaker on the Holocaust in High Schools, Colleges and Universities, Jewish Community Centers, Churches, Art Centers and libraries. I have also been a Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) keynote speaker in several large cities.

SPECIAL HOLOCAUST PRESENTATIONS

A. In 2011,I created the presentation - Survival in the Russian Partisans in response to interest in Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. It has been presented at:

-2012 Presented In conjunction with the "Pictures of Resistance" exhibit at the Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

-2012 At the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers' Program in Washington DC (sponsored by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their descendants)

-2012-present: Lectures in a course on the Holocaust by Prof. Martin Shichtman at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI

Lectures in course on the Holocaust by Prof. Elliot Ginsburg, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

-2014 Workshop presentation at the conference From Generation to Generation --The Legacy Continues. Itcelebrated the Holocaust with “Survivors, Liberators, and Righteous among the Nations and the Second and Third Generations”. The conference was organized by Nassau Holocaust and Tolerance Center and held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.

-2015 Invited Presenter of the Norman Cohn Family Holocaust Remembrance and Education Lecture at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IO.

-2017 BowlingGreen University, Bowling Green, Ohio

B. In 2013, I created the presentation- “The Art and Artist during the Holocaust”. It has been presented at:

-2014 Jewish Community Center, Ann Arbor, MI.

-2015 Albion College, Albion, MI

-2015 University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IO.

ARTIST STATEMENT

After I retired in Dec 2000 from my career as a scientist and professor at the University of Texas, I moved to Ann Arbor, MI in 2001 to pursue my dreams of becoming an artist and writer on the Holocaust. In 2002, I returned with a group headed by Professor Zvi Gittelman to Eastern Europe to view the remnants of the ghettos, camps and killing fields of the Holocaust. I cried my way throughout the entire trip, as the gaping wounds from my past reopened. I allowed the pain of those memories to again be felt, as I remembered my own experiences and those in my own family who perished. Their faces have haunted me my entire life. I felt a deep need to portray their suffering and return to them their dignity as Jews; the dignity denied them by the Germans. On that trip, I made a pact with myself and with God that I would devote my remaining life to commemorating the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. What followed since were three major art exhibits on the Holocaust.

Below are the art exhibits I created:

1. In a Confined Silence 2004– a 40-piece exhibit on the plight of individual Jews during the Holocaust.

2. Children of the Holocaust 2008– a 27-piece exhibit on the plight of individual Jewish children.

To recreate memory through art, I use photographs of actual Jews who perished, including those in my own family. I chose to use digital art in order to preserve the faces of the actual victims. My art combines the starkness of photography with the graphic power of the computer to create an art form that combines narrative realism with impressionism. Each work is accompanied by a historical perspective of its meaning within the events and phases of the Holocaust. People who have viewed my art seemed moved by the emotions contained in the imagery and intrigued with the digital tools I used to create them.

In addition to Holocaust art, I enjoy creating abstract works, in both color and black and white. These more whimsical and happy pieces express the gratitude and joy I now feel: to have survived the Holocaust, to have been blessed with a loving family (my husband Henry, daughters Judy and Havi, and five grandchildren), and to have had the opportunity to live a full and creative life, on my own terms, as a passionate individualist.

ART GRANT

Grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation to create a travelling exhibit of In a Confined Silence.

ART IN PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

1. Three of my works from In a Confined Silence are part of the Holocaust art collection of Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum of Israel). One work, Mama and I, is included in a book published by Yad Vashem: Virtues of Memory: Six Decades of Holocaust Survivor’s Creativity, 418-419, 2010

2. Two works from In a Confined Silence are part of the collection of the Judaic Studies Center at Eastern Michigan University.

3. Two works from In a Confined Silence are part of the collection of the Norman Cohn Family Holocaust Remembrance and Education Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, University of Northern Iowa

4. Three works are part of the collection of theHolocaust Memorial and Educational Center of Central Florida, Maitland, FL

ART HONOR

I am one of several Holocaust artists honored in April of 2014 at the Detroit Institute of Art.

33. 2015 Scroll of Remembrance, Grout Museum in Waterloo IA, as part of the Norman Cohn Family Holocaust Remembrance and Education Lecture at Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, University of Northern, IA

32. 2015 Scroll of Remembrance, Children of the Holocaust and In a Confined Silence, Albion College, Albion, MI